Mississippi (5 of 5)
by Foxsong
Summary: Love, death, the Consortium, and people who are not what they appear to be. **2001 Spooky winner.**


Chapter Twenty-Three

When he opened his eyes again it was almost dark.

Mulder smelled the smoke of the cigarette before he could distinguish the point of ruddy light in the shadows on the stairs. He turned his head slowly toward it, relieved to find that the throbbing in his head had lessened and was almost gone. 

With a little effort he found he could make out her slim form, seated near the bottom of the stairs; one leg was tucked beneath her, the other bent at the knee, her foot propped against the stair rail. As he watched, she brought the cigarette to her lips, and for that moment its glow brightened just enough to reveal the outlines of her face. Then she sighed out the smoke and draped her arm once more across her knee.

He licked his lips. It felt like a long time, he thought, since he'd finished that bottle of water, but of course he had no way of knowing for sure. He wasn't sure she was planning on bringing him another one, either.

"Paula." 

It came out barely above a whisper. The only indication at all that she had heard him was the shift of her weight on the stair and the disinterested flicker of the little red light as she tapped the ash from the end of her cigarette.

"Paula," he tried again, and then, after a pause, "Paula. Let me talk to Denny."

The reddish light wavered briefly in its slow arc on the way to her mouth. "Absolutely not." She took a long, deep drag on the cigarette, exhaling her words evenly with the smoke. "As hard as I've worked to shield her from this? No."

She didn't sound angry, so Mulder pressed on. "She's a smart woman, Paula. She must have realized by now that something's going on."

"No," Paula repeated firmly. "She's not the one who knows about this. She doesn't even have to remember how it began anymore. I'm in charge of this now." She turned her head and looked full at him for the first time. "It's better for all of us this way."

"How is it better for Denny?" he persisted. "How long do you think she can rationalize away all the things that don't add up? You must know her better than anyone else, Paula. You know it must torment her. Is it right to take this much of her own life away from her?"

"She doesn't want that part of her life," Paula answered sharply. "Why should she? Look what it's already cost her. Her childhood. Her family. The Bureau. You think it would stop there? You think it wouldn't cost her this career and Jim now, too?"

"He's known her all her life," Mulder said. "He knows she was taken. He hasn't left. You don't know that he will."

Paula rose from the stairs and advanced upon him slowly, as a cat upon prey. "You think so?" she asked, her voice low and dark with anger. "Do you think he'd love her if he knew what they'd done to her? Do you think he'd still love her if he knew what she really is?"

Mulder's head had begun to ache again, deep muffled drumbeats against his temples. Before he could formulate the right answer, Paula turned on her heel and stalked away.

"*I* love her!" she burst out savagely, whirling to face him again. "*I* love her. I've protected her. Who else is going to take care of her the way I do?" She thrust the cigarette into her mouth and took a fierce drag.

"But what about you, Paula?" he asked weakly.

"What about me?" she snapped.

"Who's going to take care of you?"

Paula froze, and even in the dark Mulder could feel her staring at him, could feel the rage rolling off her in waves. He waited for her to strike, but in the end she only spat her cigarette onto the floor, and crushed it beneath her heel, and fled up the stairs into the house.

Chapter Twenty-Four

They took the sheriff's car. He drove with confident speed down the narrow roads; though Darrow was, indeed, just across the river, the route to the bridge crossing was circuitous. It was late enough that there were few other cars on the road.

Inside the car, the silence was broken only by the occasional crackle of the radio, and by the voices of the dispatcher and some officer that followed. Scully watched the amorphous forms of the landscape passing by her window. The sky was still as grey as it had been all weekend; though the drizzling rain had held off tonight, the clouds diffused the moonlight that should have been shining down, reducing the features of the land to this unearthly watercolor wash. 

Finally they came to the bridge, and when she looked down she was startled to see the way the violent torrents leaped and roiled, spewing up spray and foam. "My God," she murmured.

"What?"

"The river." As she watched, it carried an enormous tree branch across an exposed rock, splintering it like a twig.

"The storm," Cormerais said shortly. "She gets like this when there's a big enough storm coming."

Scully craned her neck for a last look at the river as they left the bridge and came onto land again. " 'She'?"

"Lots of us who've lived by the Mississippi all our lives call it 'she'," the sheriff said. He reached out to the dashboard and turned on his flashing lights, and blipped his siren twice; the slower car ahead of them pulled aside to let him pass, and he turned the lights off. "She's not just a river, when you know her. She's like a live thing."

Scully settled back into her seat and into the silence again.

Darrow was a much smaller town than Donaldsonville; once into it, they were across it in only a few minutes. The street they wanted went uphill, doubling back toward the river, and the sheriff cut the headlights of the car as he pulled into the gravel driveway of the last house on the street. It stood alone on a rise overlooking the Mississippi.

The house was dark; there were no signs that anyone might be there. Still, as she stepped out of the car, Scully took out her weapon and let the safety off before slipping it back into its holster and taking out her flashlight. Cormerais reached under the driver's seat and pulled out a flashlight big enough to double as a club. Scully nodded to the sheriff, and they made their way as quietly as they could across the gravel toward the garage.

The windows were set high in the pull-down door, and Scully wasn't tall enough to see into them. Cormerais, peering inside, switched on his flashlight and cautiously lifted it to the edge of the dusty pane. "I don't... God." 

She stood up on her toes, but it wasn't enough. "What?"

"That's Denny's Jeep."

Somewhere inside the house, Scully thought she heard a door slam. She reached up quickly and batted the sheriff's flashlight away from the windowpane. As he turned toward her, she gestured toward his car. "Call for backup," she said.

"Denny owns this place," he protested. "It doesn't mean -- " 

"Call for backup," Scully hissed, "or I'll call 911 and do it for you." 

In the eerie half-light of the stormclouds, she could see the way the sheriff's jaw clenched, but he moved away from her toward the car, and reached inside through the open window for the radio mike.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The door at the top of the stairs banged violently against the wall as it flew open. Light footfalls raced down the steps, and then she was kneeling on the floor at his side, pushing at him, trying to make him sit up. "Come on," she said breathlessly, tugging at his arm. "Come on. We have to go."

"Paula? What are you --" Mulder's shoulder protested at the sudden movement, and his stomach churned in sympathy; he fell forward against her, coughing. She threw her arms around him to hold him up. 

"Come on," she repeated urgently. She started getting to her feet, trying to pull him up beside her. "Get up. There's not much time."

He lurched awkwardly to his knees. It was hard to find his balance with the way the room was whirling around him. He lifted his head to look around in the dim light from the window, hoping to orient himself that way, and the pain in his shoulder stabbed up into his neck. "I don't think I can," he gasped. 

"You *have* to." Her arms went around his waist and strained against his ribs. "You have to. They're coming." 

She was pulling at him with such fevered strength that he had little choice but to try to obey. He clenched his teeth against the pain and somehow managed to get his legs beneath him, and with her help he staggered to his feet. He realized that she was breathing so quickly she was almost panting; he could feel the frantic racing of her heart as he leaned heavily against her.

She immediately began trying to lead him toward the stairs. He made it that far with less trouble than he'd expected, but he stumbled against the first step and almost fell. She clutched at him to steady him, and he grunted as she jostled his injured shoulder.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she said quickly, but she never stopped urging him forward. "We have to hurry. They're coming." 

There was an odd, pleading note that he'd never heard before in her voice, but Mulder could hardly concentrate enough to notice it, much less try to decipher what it meant. Climbing the stairs was too difficult to allow him the luxury of thinking of anything else while he did it. It took all his effort to lift each foot and place it on the next step. 

As they came to the top his strength failed, and he sagged against the doorframe to rest, gasping for breath, but she pulled him away from the wall. "You can't stop!" she exclaimed, propelling him forward again into the room. The inside of the house was nearly as dark as the basement had been; as they passed a window Mulder saw that the curtains were drawn across it, and he supposed she must have covered all the windows that way.

As they crossed the kitchen and came to the back door of the house, Mulder thought he heard a car door slam outside. She must have heard it too, for she froze for a moment as if listening, and then pushed him forward again with one hand as she drew back the bolt of the doorlatch with the other. "Hurry!" she hissed. The door swung open before him, and Mulder found himself shuffling out onto the back porch.

A blast of cold, damp wind nearly toppled him as he crossed the threshold, but his captor's hands set him upright again, and he stumbled across the porch with her. Going down stairs proved simpler than going up; he made it down the two steps onto the grass with relative ease. As he set out across the yard, half-led and half-carried, Mulder glanced back and thought he saw the play of flashlight beams against the windowpanes from the inside of the garage.

A spray of rain splashed against his face, and he ducked, nearly losing his precarious balance, but the woman beside him never faltered. He stumbled forward again, leaning into her strong shoulder. The throbbing in his own shoulder echoed every step he took over the slick, uneven ground, but the cool air or the rain or perhaps just the fact that he was moving around had begun to clear his head; able to assess his surroundings now, he looked around himself as they fled.

It was night, he knew, but it was impossible to tell what time it might be. The moon and stars were obscured by banks of swiftly rolling clouds, their color that peculiar sickly grey that portended a storm. The landscape was only a series of monochrome shadows; here might be trees, there shrubs and abandoned, overgrown gardens -- it was hard to tell. They had been advancing steadily, gently uphill; now they topped a rise and the land began to slope away downward again. The long blur of white ahead of them began to take more definite form, and Mulder was able to make out that it was the picket fence he'd stood at that first night with Paula, and then he realized that the sound he'd heard ever since leaving the house wasn't only the wind, but the river as well. 

There was nothing peaceful about the sound of the river tonight. It wasn't merely that the sound was louder, but that its tone had changed; Mulder almost felt he could hear within it hundreds of angry voices, dissenting, threatening. There seemed to be words and phrases that he couldn't quite catch, as if he were overhearing a bitter argument through an apartment wall. Now and then a distant rumble of thunder added its underscore.

"Where are we going?" he asked as they came closer to the fence. "Paula? Where are we going?" There was no answer save for the steady pressure of her hands pushing him forward.

Just then, Mulder heard a shout behind them, and he recognized the tone of the voice, as clear over the echo of the thunder and the rush of the river as the ringing of a bell. He stumbled, almost going to his knees, and sobbed aloud in relief.

"Stop!" Scully cried again. "Federal agent! I'm armed!"

"Denny!" came another voice that must have been the sheriff's. "Denny, wait right there!"

Mulder grunted as he was swung around by his bad arm to face the voices. He felt the muzzle of a pistol shoved up against his jaw just below and in front of his ear. In the ghostlight of the storm, he saw Scully and the sheriff halt, perhaps a little less than a hundred feet away, at the sight of the weapon. 

Scully's own weapon was drawn. She held it out in front of her with both hands, her feet spread apart and planted firmly in the tussocks of wet grass. Her hair and her long coat fluttered in the gusty wind. "Step away from him, Dr. Dennison," she called loudly. "Put your gun on the ground and step back. No sudden moves."

Mulder felt her pull him closer against her side. "I can't," she cried. "You don't understand. I can't." The gun pushed harder against his jaw, tilting his head back. He felt himself being dragged slowly backward as she retreated. 

"I'll understand, Denny," the sheriff said. He eased forward, his empty hands outstretched, palms turned upward. "I'll understand. Just let him go now, baby. Come on."

Mulder could feel her beginning to tremble. In the distance, near the house, he saw the flashing lights of two police cruisers pulling into the driveway. He could tell by the way Scully stiffened for a moment that she'd heard the sirens, but she never took her eyes off the woman next to him.

Mulder felt their slow backward progress suddenly stopped by the picket fence at his back. Cormerais inched nearer, and Mulder felt the gun leave his ear; he watched it wave unsteadily at Scully and the sheriff. The four uniformed officers ran toward them with their own weapons drawn; they formed a phalanx behind Scully, but came no closer.

They were pinned against the fence. She was shaking now, but her arm remained locked around Mulder's waist, her fingers clutching the wrist of his injured arm with ferocious strength. "Please. I'm sorry," she cried, her voice breaking. "I didn't mean it. I didn't know. I never would have done it if I'd known."

"I know, baby," Cormerais answered. "It'll be okay. Just put that down and come to me. Come on now."

"Put down the weapon, Dr. Dennison," Scully repeated.

She didn't seem to hear. "You don't know what they did to me. You don't know the things they did to me!" She was crying wildly now; the pistol pointed back and forth from Scully to the sheriff and then returned to Mulder's cheek again. "Why did he let them take me? He gave me away. My own father gave me to them." Her voice rose in a desperate shriek. "My own father! Why did he let them take me? Why?"

Cormerais was only about thirty feet away now, his empty hands still outstretched. Scully trailed him by about fifteen feet, but Mulder knew she wouldn't be able to get a shot in; he was obstructing her target, serving as a shield. The police officers were slowly fanning out, and he knew they were hoping to be able to get around to the sides, but he knew as well that the fence would prevent them from getting far enough behind them to get a decent shot.

"Denny," the sheriff pleaded. His voice was calm, but Mulder could see in the half-light that his expression was sick with grief and fear. "You don't have to do this."

"They never should have brought me back," she sobbed. The muzzle of the gun shifted against Mulder's face with the force of her weeping. "I wish they'd never brought me back." 

"Come on, Denny. Let him go." Cormerais nodded reassuringly and lifted his arms further toward her. "This can all be over, Denny. This can end right now."

Mulder felt her draw a deep breath. "You're right," she called over the rising wind. She straightened up against him, easing out from directly behind him toward his side, and her grip on his wrist loosened just a little. "You're right. It can." 

It happened so quickly that he was confused. She let go of his wrist; she tossed the weapon aside; as nimbly as a cat and just as quickly, she sprang over the picket fence and darted away toward the river. With a wordless shout, the sheriff followed; he vaulted the fence and sprinted after her, but he was too late and too slow. For a second Mulder thought the earthshaking crack he heard was the report of the pistol going off as it hit the ground, but it was only the thunder.

Mulder, falling, caught himself against the fence and turned. In the brilliant flash of lightning, the image was burned forever into his mind: her long golden hair streaming around her head like a halo, her arms outstretched; her body describing an arc like a diver's, impossibly graceful, poised in midair over the raging waters of the Mississippi that waited to receive her.

The steel sky opened then, and the rain poured down, and as he collapsed to the earth Mulder heard Scully's voice, and felt her arms around him.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The late-afternoon sunlight was sloping in through the window of the hospital room where Mulder sat propped up in bed. Scully looked in, and paused in the doorway, tapping at the open door. 

"Isn't it early?" he asked as she stepped inside. "Visiting hours don't start till after dinner."

She shrugged. "I waved my badge around again," she answered. "Works every time."

Half a dozen clever rejoinders jumped to mind, but he let the moment pass, and she walked over to the side of his bed.

"You're doing well," she said. "The last traces of the drugs seem to be out of your system now. And did they tell you they aren't going to have to do the surgery on that shoulder after all?"

He nodded. "Yeah. The doctor was just here about fifteen mimutes ago." He found he was grateful to her for standing so far up by the head of the bed; he couldn't turn his head far enough to be able to look her in the eye, and so he didn't have to try. "They said I'll have this arm in a sling for six or eight weeks, but they want to let me out of here tomorrow."

"You're getting off easy," she said softly, and he nodded again, thinking it might be too easy, thinking it might have been easier to live with if it had been harder to live through.

Scully turned and made one slow circuit of the room, finally coming to a halt before the window. The evenings were short these days, with winter almost here; the thin ray of watery sunlight that had made its way across the floor only a few minutes ago was already gone. Scully watched at the window, seemingly absorbed in the view. She was still looking out when she spoke again.

"Mulder, they... We found the body this morning. Down at the bend of the river, near where all the victims had washed up."

He couldn't look at her. Instead he silently studied the little hills and valleys the blanket made as it draped across his legs.

"I had meant to do the autopsy myself, but..." 

He glanced up to see her shaking her head slowly, her eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance between them.

"But by the time we got back to the morgue, and went to take the body bag out of the ambulance, something had -- In just that time, the body had decomposed." She finally lifted her head and met his gaze.

He regarded her for a long moment, unsure whether she meant exactly what he thought. "...Decomposed?" he asked at last.

She nodded. "Like the woman who died in the fall from Memorial Bridge in Bethesda. The one who traded herself for me."

Mulder's heart sank. "She *was* an abductee," he said slowly. "She was exposed to the virus."

"No, Mulder. Not just exposed," Scully answered. "Simple exposure doesn't have such a profound effect. If it did, then neither of us would be alive today."

"But she..." His mind raced through the possibilities, each more unsavory than the last. "Then what was she?"

She held up one hand in something like a warning gesture. "I won't know for sure until I see the results on the samples I sent to our own labs in Washington today. ... Oh, hell. Maybe I won't know with any certainty then, either." She folded her arms across her chest and sighed. "Maybe a hybrid. Or a clone." 

A clone of what? he wondered silently. The idea was intriguing, appalling. It made what he had done somehow both less and more reprehensible. "And she was sent to eliminate these people for whatever reason? It doesn't make sense. A bounty hunter, yes, but..."

Scully shook her head. "I don't think the murders were part of the plan. I keep thinking of the other woman you told me about, the one that the smoking man brought to meet you once. The one that you said really seemed to believe she was your sister. 

"I think, maybe, that when Paula Dennison was taken as a six-year-old child, she never really came back. I think it's possible that the woman we met here never knew what she really was."

Mulder paused to digest this. "But that's not what you're putting in your report." He had meant it to be a question, but somewhere between the thought and the spoken word it had become a statement.

"No," she sighed, seeming to sag a little. "On the record, I'm planning to go with your original idea of dissociative identity disorder. Her psychiatrist even admitted, albeit a bit reluctantly, that if she was in the habit of diagnosing DID, she might well have done so here."

"What a ringing endorsement," Mulder said sourly.

"You know as well as I do that it's a controversial diagnosis in many circles." She sighed again and turned away, leaning her hands upon the windowpane, her gaze once again searching the darkening landscape. "I'm faxing in my report tomorrow morning." 

"Okay," he said uncertainly, and waited.

She paused, glancing back over her shoulder; she turned toward him from the window then, but came no closer, nor did she look up to meet his eyes. "Mulder," she said slowly, "there's another thing you should know. There's nothing in the report to indicate any... indiscretion on your part. I didn't think... I don't think it's necessary to know any of that in order to understand the resolution of the case."

"Scully."

"No, Mulder, I --"

"Don't lie for me, Scully."

She looked up, and her eyes met his; he felt burned by her simple, unaccusing gaze. "Call us even, then. Call us even, after your report on how Donnie Pfaster died."

He had no answer for that, and fell silent.

She was pacing now, treading a slow, deliberate, even path up and down the floor beside his bed. "Mulder, I feel..." she began, and hesitated; he closed his eyes, steeling himself. He wished she would just cut him down the way he had imagined her doing; these measured words, her level voice, held a far worse torment.

"Mulder, you're not alone in this," she finally went on. "I feel as if I share in it, too."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, more harshly than he'd meant. "How could you be responsible? You had nothing to do with it. I'm the one who --" And he stopped sharply, not wanting to pick at the scab, to reopen the wound. He didn't want to think anymore about how he had finally thrown away whatever chance he might have had with her.

"No, Mulder," she said, coming to a stop beside him. "Listen to me." She clasped her hands together, staring down at them. "I don't think you would have gone with her if I had -- if I had..."

"Scully, no. No," he whispered, reaching up awkwardly to touch her hands.

"Maybe I'm -- maybe I'm being presumptuous. But if I had been able to let down my guard, to let you in," and her voice quavered, "the way you've been asking me to for so long, then..." She twined the fingers of one hand through his; she lifted her other hand to cover her eyes. He could see that she was trying not to cry. 

"Please, Scully," he begged, squeezing her hand. "Please don't." Don't tell me this. Don't tell me how I've finally broken your heart.

"I was afraid," she was whispering, her eyes still downcast. "I was afraid." He waited, but Scully said no more. 

"She told me," he finally began, halting at the name, "she -- Paula told me no one would love her if they found out what had happened to her when she was abducted. Scully... is that what you're afraid of, too?"

"It's more like..." She turned his hand over in her own, studying it. "I didn't know if it was just me you wanted. If I was enough. I wondered if you blamed yourself -- if you thought you had something to make up to me, because I was abducted, and if that was why you thought you loved me."

"Do *you* blame me?" 

She lifted her head as if startled. "No." She clutched his hand tighter, and lifted it to her lips. "No, Mulder. Never."

"Oh, Scully," he murmured. "I -- I loved you a long time before you were taken. I just..."

Her eyes met his at last. "I want to try, Mulder," she said.

His throat tightened. "Come here," he said gruffly, tugging at her hand. She bent over him, wrapping her arms around him; he put his good arm around her and hugged her tight. "I'm so sorry, Scully," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"So am I," she said, and she shifted in his embrace. He felt her lips brush against his. The touch was so brief, so delicate, that he fleetingly wondered if it had been in error. When she didn't pull away, he let his fingertips trail up her back; at his tentative gesture she bent her head and kissed him, really kissed him, and this time there could be no mistaking what she meant by it. 

When she lifted her head, she moved as if to pull back, but he took her wrist in his hand so that she could not, and she met his eyes. For an endless moment he simply looked at her, studying her as if he were really seeing her for the first time.

At last she broke his gaze and looked down. "I guess I should go..."

"Would you -- " he faltered, "will you come back later? During the regular visitors' hours?"

She paused. "If you want me to," she finally answered.

"I do. I wish you would," he said in a rush, and she nodded.

Scully straightened up, and he expected her to pull her hand away, but she waited, watching him, the first hint of a smile playing across her mouth. All at once she seemed to make up her mind. She leaned down again and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"So. I'll see you after dinner. And I don't want to hear your usual complaints about the menu," she said near his ear, and added, whispering, "I... love you."

Mulder released her wrist and let her go. She turned, smiling over her shoulder at him, and walked toward the door, but as she came to the threshold she paused, and her smile faded. It was plain that there was something more on her mind.

"Scully?" he ventured. "What are you not telling me?"

Scully waited a long moment, as if measuring her words. "They found something else today, too, Mulder," she said quietly. "They found that missing girl."

Mulder watched her face for clues, but there were none. He inclined his head inquiringly.

"And she seems fine. She just wandered in from the bayou, Sheriff Cormerais said. Just like that. Just..." She spread her hands helplessly. "Just walked out of the bayou. And there isn't so much as a scratch on her."

"After that storm?" Mulder frowned, incredulous.

Scully leaned against the doorframe and sighed. "She said she didn't remember a storm, Mulder," she answered, her eyes downcast.

"Well, what does she remember?"

"Not a thing," she said, shaking her head slowly. "She knows who and where she is, knows her family, knows her friends, her school, even 'N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, but..." Her voice trailed off. 

"But nothing about her abduction," he murmured. "Nothing about what they..."

She looked up at him with haunted eyes. "Would you really expect her to?" she asked. He knew the question was rhetorical. "Anyway, Sheriff Cormerais asked if I -- if *we* -- wanted to look into it with him."

Anything Mulder might have been able to say fled his mind at her words. What did Cormerais know? He couldn't imagine how he could face the man, even if the sheriff had no idea what had happened. He sat staring dumbly at Scully. Finally she cleared her throat, and that seemed to shake him from his stupor.

"What -- what did you tell him?" he choked out.

She dropped her gaze to the floor, where the toe of one foot was tracing an idle pattern against the linoleum. "That I had to speak to you about it first."

A wave of gratitude washed over him. "What do *you* want to do, Scully?"

Her answer was a long time in coming. 

"I don't know, Mulder," she said at last. "I honestly don't know. I want to run there, overturn every stone, detain everyone within a ten-mile radius for questioning, re-examine the evidence that's been examined, and do it all again, until I find the answers. But..."

He waited. Somewhere out in the hall he heard a doctor being paged; he registered, at the edge of his vision, that it was fully dark outside the window now. Then Scully looked up and continued.

"But part of me just wants to go away and leave these poor people alone. Part of me wants to believe that their nightmare is over. Part of me wants to believe that this was just a terrible coincidence and that they'll all live happily ever after."

He leaned back and closed his eyes. It was the same story, over and over, he thought; it was the same question, posed in different forms, and asked again and again, as if some gods thought he might really find the answer someday. Where did he draw the line? Where did his obligation end? When did he step away from the trail of broken hearts and minds and lives?

The question was too wearying to answer now. He opened his eyes to find Scully watching him. "Let's talk about it after dinner," he sighed.

She nodded and made an attempt at a little smile. "Okay. See you later." 

"Scully?" He called her back as she turned to leave. "Sneak me in a snack? Bring chocolate, and maybe I'll share."

"Don't push your luck, Mulder," she answered, but her smile broadened even as she shook her head in mock disapproval. Then she was through the door and gone, and all Mulder could hear was the rhythmic click of her heels fading away down the hall.

-- End --

Thanks for reading! foxsong@earthlink.net 


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